by Valerie Sweeney Prince
In between working, I managed to make some friends. It was hard to find time for it, though. Work was always so demanding. Work seemed like it was everything—everything always needing to be done. And despite always attending to it first and most urgently, always being there in unending piles before me.
Friends. Not so. They were not simply there waiting to be attended to. Over the years, the winds eroded the mountain of friends in high school and because there was no orange school bus bringing us to the same place every day to meet—we didn’t. And before long, with other schools and work pulling us in different directions, we didn’t encounter one another at all.
I just went to a funeral for the mother of one of my best childhood girl friends. I had been the matron of honor at her wedding and I loved her mother, too. Although my work has taken me many miles away from my childhood home, I was able to make it. My daughter piled into the car with me and we drove the six hours to the DMV where my family still lives. Coming home is generally fraught with the fissures caused by today’s terrain shifting past that which used to be. Funerals are after shocks reminding us of the earthquake of death that shakes the very ground we walk on.
I’m at an age now that I have friends whom I have known for more than 30 years. That’s enough time for the distance between us to get very long. The ties that bind are strained but not completely severed. And I am grateful, at times like these, to be reminded that I have managed to remain friendly (if not good friends) with some I knew when in our formative years.
Studies have shown that people who have close friendships are healthier and happier than those who do not have a strong circle of friends. Studies may well also show that academics and other professionals don’t have the strongest circle of friends. I really don’t know if this is the case, but I suspect that anyone who continually puts work at the top of every agenda has a hard time maintaining close friends. And that these people may suffer shorter, less fulfilling lives as a result.
At the funeral, my friend’s brother wanted to acknowledge her crew—the friends who helped sustain his sister—so he asked them to stand. For a moment, I didn’t know what to do. Sit. Stand. I stayed seated. But I still feel like I’m in her crew. I hope she knows that I’m in her crew.
In between working, I managed to make some friends. It was hard to find time for it, though. Work was always so demanding. Work seemed like it was everything—everything always needing to be done. And despite always attending to it first and most urgently, always being there in unending piles before me.
Friends. Not so. They were not simply there waiting to be attended to. Over the years, the winds eroded the mountain of friends in high school and because there was no orange school bus bringing us to the same place every day to meet—we didn’t. And before long, with other schools and work pulling us in different directions, we didn’t encounter one another at all.
I just went to a funeral for the mother of one of my best childhood girl friends. I had been the matron of honor at her wedding and I loved her mother, too. Although my work has taken me many miles away from my childhood home, I was able to make it. My daughter piled into the car with me and we drove the six hours to the DMV where my family still lives. Coming home is generally fraught with the fissures caused by today’s terrain shifting past that which used to be. Funerals are after shocks reminding us of the earthquake of death that shakes the very ground we walk on.
I’m at an age now that I have friends whom I have known for more than 30 years. That’s enough time for the distance between us to get very long. The ties that bind are strained but not completely severed. And I am grateful, at times like these, to be reminded that I have managed to remain friendly (if not good friends) with some I knew when in our formative years.
Studies have shown that people who have close friendships are healthier and happier than those who do not have a strong circle of friends. Studies may well also show that academics and other professionals don’t have the strongest circle of friends. I really don’t know if this is the case, but I suspect that anyone who continually puts work at the top of every agenda has a hard time maintaining close friends. And that these people may suffer shorter, less fulfilling lives as a result.
At the funeral, my friend’s brother wanted to acknowledge her crew—the friends who helped sustain his sister—so he asked them to stand. For a moment, I didn’t know what to do. Sit. Stand. I stayed seated. But I still feel like I’m in her crew. I hope she knows that I’m in her crew.
